I am very pleased that the Department is going ahead with my idea of  developing a fun learning space with all sorts of nice gadgets for students to play with and develop applications for. I confess the idea came from reading one too many articles about the great work environment at Google, where instead of cubicles people have flexible spaces which encourage creativity.

While I don't think I can ask for funds to set up tents and Legos and  balls for our students, at least we've been able to commit to buying some equipment to allow students to move away from only using workstations: so, therefore, a mixture of Kinects, touchscreens,  tablets, mobile phones, and any other interactive hardware. Soon we started thinking about adding sensors and actuators, which have become quite popular and easy to program within the context of Arduino kits. And from there, we've also thought it would be nice to develop a sensor network, and use the lovely space in our building as a space for exploration.

By "we", above, I mean staff, unfortunately. So is this dream of having a fun space where students develop creative applications which will make it into a futuristic lifestyle yet another misunderstanding of what makes our young students tick? Some students I have been talking to seem excited enough, and they tell me that their colleagues are also quite excited about the idea. So I at least am convinced, and am in the process of creating a list of gadgets which will fit our budget and also thing through some details about how access to the equipment can work out in practice. But there is still the fear that any equipment we get will just gather dust.

(But if any reader of this blog has any ideas for this gadget space, whether of specific equipment or even how to manage access, I'd be very happy to hear from you.)

While I've been developing the idea of the space and its equipment, one colleague introduced me to the whole world of hackerspaces: democratic spaces where people come together to work on personal projects, sharing ideas and expertise, and glowing with the buzz of being amongst like-minded people. This seemed like a perfect way of managing the ideas for the equipment above. My idea was never to restrict the gadgets only for formal work towards a taught module or a marked programming project, but to encourage free-style exploration. But for this style of learning to work, it needs to be nurtured: someone with the responsibility of having some initial workshops, some incentives to break the ice and work together, but coming not from a lecturer or formal trainer giving instructions and homeworks, but with a peer with passion.

Hard to expect such a peer to also have the time and drive to make it work. I have asked for some University funding to hang in front of some students, hopefully we will get it and we can make use of some of the programming gurus in our student population in an effective way to create a culture of creativity.

While talking of spaces, I thought I should also mention a very exciting development that the Department is getting involved in, which is CUSP: a Centre for Urban Science and Progress, to be set up... in New York! This is a collaboration between many universities and especially NYU, and the idea is to look at issues which directly affect urban life. I can't help but feel that the idea of gadgets and  interactive application are particularly important in this context. And hackerspaces seem particularly popular in urban spaces as a way to bring together people from all walks of life, not just students but professionals, technologists, and more importantly the hobbyist and the expert amateur. And who knows where such collaborations can lead.

I am in the University-wide committee for the Athena SWAN initiative and, for now, responsible for putting in an application for an award by the Department of Computer Science.

It's been difficult to even explain to people what Athena SWAN is. It is described as a charter, which according to my dictionary is a kind of contract, or some document giving some rights, which doesn't clarify matters much. And the name too leaves people baffled: Athena is fine, after all the godess of knowledge and the sciences., but is SWAN an acronym? I am still not sure. It has been set up by The UKRC, not to be confused by RCUK (the latter being the well-known partnership between UK Research Councils). All this is enough to make my head swim!

Despite the above confusion, Athena SWAN seems like a great initiative, in its objective to recognize good practice in supporting women working in the sciences in higher education and research. Over the years there have been several initiatives, such as AWISE which I tried to bring to the Midlands many years back, but which seems to have fizzled out, as well as WISE, and I am sure several others. It seems that Athena SWAN is attempting to satisfy its objective not just at a grassroots level but by exerting some top-down pressure as well, so it seems likely to bear some fruit.

Amongst the disciplines covered by the initiative, it seems that Computer Science is probably one that is in most need of help. Female numbers amongst students has never been high but seems to be decreasing. A colleague at another University was wrily talking about his success in doubling the number of female staff, only to clarify by saying they only had one female colleague before.

And yet, many of the women I talk to don't really want to engage with the issue, mostly with the fear that any effort will be seen as an attempt to give them an unfair advantage, that they would much rather succeed on their own merit. And then there is the ironic side-effect that, by being the ones to engage with the charter and prepare the application, they will spread themselves even more thinly and be further away from the goals set by the Gods above, namely A* publications and big grants, which at the end of the day are the main measures of productivity.

Anyway, what are the issues, and what can be done?

The issue of why young women don't come into Computer Science has caused many debates. Many causes are advanced, discussed, and some measures are undertaken in some limited setting, but I haven't really seen a significant solution.

Recently, Prof Wendy Hall wrote in the Guardian that she believed the perception of CS as a geeky discipline was putting girls off. Somehow this headline didn't really convince me, but upon reading the article I saw other points being made, principally that girls thought that "...  if they study computing they are going to become secretaries." This seems to be much more of a serious issue than an anti-geekiness bias. Somehow there still seems to be a perception that CS is just not for girls, which is not something the girls are inventing from nowhere but which they are concluding from clues they are given, even if unconsciously or subtly. Not many role models.

In my department we have been trying to engage with schools recently, and this last year I was involved in two occasions, one where I introduced 13-14 yr olds to Computational Biology and the other where I helped 11-12 yr olds use Scratch and try to program nice star-shapes with it. Neither activity was geared towards girls specifically, and I found that the girls in the groups were as enthusiastic and attentive as the boys (if not more). So it seems that at that age at least they are still amenable to being lured into an interest in computing. I hope we continue with these efforts.

But Athena SWAN is, I believe, primarily concerned with women who have already made a start in the discipline and who either drop off from careers in teaching and research or who stagnate and do not reach their potential. 

Some of the factors seem to be about the old juggling family and career conundrum, and in fact the support is not so much for women in academia but having family-friendly policies. And, as far as some of the issues, Computer Science seems particularly suitable for the kind of flexibility that both male and female colleagues here have taken up: the freedom to work from home when working on research, readjusting teaching times to suit school runs and so on. Other issues are more problematic, such as attending conferences or dealing with school holidays, but my observation of colleagues with small kids leads me to think these are not very vexing issues here (but I am happy to be corrected).

But what are the issues that affect women more than men? I have been very interested in a discussion led by Prof Athene Donald about the impostor syndrome, the feeling that one has only got as far as one has by some fluke of luck, orbeing at the right place at the right time, but in the end not deserving to get any further. So, a lack of self-confidence, which probably arises from that early perception that women don't really do Computer Science which I alluded to above. As stated by Prof Donald, it is not that men do not suffer from this syndrome, but it seems anecdotally that many more women feel this way. I heard a few years back that, when faced with some criteria for a job, women tend to only apply if they feel they satisfy all the criteria while men would apply as long as they satisfy some of the criteria. It seems that bravura does pay off in the end.

There are other issues, of course, and I can't paint only a rosy picture of academia. While explicit sexism is in my experience rare, there is often a feeling that women are generally better at some jobs, such as the nurturing which is helpful for tutoring students through personal issues, or the more organisational/secretarial skills required in, for example dealing with examinations. Whether men can more often willfully make themselves inept for such duties is open to debate. It is however the case that these organizational and/or nurturing skills are rarely seen as reasons to promote anyone in an academic job. The same people may actually also have the research skills which are rewarded, but they have little time left to demonstrate these skills, and thus the vicious circle is set up.

I suppose I will be thinking about all these issues over the next few months while I prepare our Athena SWAN submission and will be discussing with colleagues and students, and hopefully with anyone who reads these thoughts and is driven to comment, either here or directly via email or phone or a knock on my office door.

I've been this evening to the Ideas Cafe organized by the University. This was just the kind of event that makes me pleased to have chosen an academic life. The evening started with several short talks on the theme of Connecting Cultures, one of the "global priority" themes proposed recently for multidisciplinary research and collaboration as being topical and significant. Three interesting takes on the theme: health and cultures, memory and cultures, and translation.

All three themes provided food for thought, which was complimented by very nice food and drink of a physical kind, and enough time to chat with other academics from other disciplines. ostensibly about the theme but also at a wider level. It is this opportunity to meet thinkers in different subjects which in my opinion characterizes a rich, organic University life. I often go to seminars in other disciplines, but in the end these are quite focussed, and in the end everyone seems to rush off for other events, or lectures, or whatever. And one feels slightly silly and awkward just standing around to chit-chat. Here, we had the encouragement to stay and talk, with write-able tablecloth and a chance to summarise and come back into the large group in the end. While the more cycnical amongst us thinks of these as management-type gimmicks, they can work to facilitate dialogue.

Looking forward to more Ideas Cafes!

Actually, the last few weeks have been good for expanding horizons: I've been to the TEDx mini-event organized by students, a talk by the curator of an exhibition at the Mead Gallery,  several great seminars, and interesting one-on-one chats with various people from other departments. Not bad for a campus in the Midlands, which even some colleagues dismiss as having not enough to do.

[Posted on Dept Website.]

February sees the launch of the ROADBLOCK project, funded by the EPSRC with the goal of developing artificial and programmable bacterial coatings to protect surfaces against infective agents. While Bioengineering techniques that allow genes to be manipulated have been around for some time, the discipline of Synthetic Biology allows for the more effective design of genetic circuits. The Principle Investigator for this project is Dr Sara Kalvala, who will be applying her expertise in Compiler Design and Formal Logics towards the development of tools which will help assemble genetic networks and model their interactions with host genes.

The Department invites applications for a Research Fellowship to work on this three-year project. The project requires a post-doctoral researcher with a good background in Computer Science, especially in either Compiler Design or Automated Reasoning, who would like to expand their horizons and apply their knowledge into Synthetic Biology.

More information and details of the application procedure are available from http://go.warwick.ac.uk/kalvala/pdra. The deadline for applications is 27 February 2012.

I just received the MIT Catalogue of books on Science, Technology and Society. It's amazing to go through some of the titles and summaries - books on protocells, internet, nanotechnology, robotics... and some of the implications of these technological advances to our lives - bioethics, security, privacy, rights, and the whole "techno-human condition", which is the title of one of the books. This last book seems extremely exciting, with the premiss that we are shaped by technology as much as we shape the technology. I really must try to get this book.

What an amazing time we live in! Life has already changed so much since my childhood; hope to live through many of the other changes that are just around the corner.

I have in the past posted about using presentation software. I still am not totally happy and still looking for better solutions.

After hearing students' requests for recording of lectures, I have used Camtasia Relay to capture lectures - this consists of a recording of the screen with audio - a good compromise without full-blown video. I have used it for 3 lectures in the Introductory Programming module, though haven't heard back from students whether they found it useful or not. More local information about Camtasia is available.

It seems to be particularly suitable for Powerpoint presentations, because going directly to a thumbnail of slide takes the presentation (and audio) to that point. Luckily for that module I used Powerpoints prepared by my colleague Stephen. Also it seemed okay for that module where all the visuals were on the Powerpoint, rather than using a whiteboard or other media. But these are two issues which will affect any use of Camtasia on other modules, where I use PDF files, and whiteboards.

Talking of PDF, one source of frustration is that I cannot easily underline or highlight parts of the slides, or mark them in any way as I would with old-fashioned overheads. (At least not with the equipment I have available.) I finally found that okular is a PDF viewer that works well in Linux, and which supports "reviews" where slides can be annotated. Not ideal for presentations but better than simple viewers like acroread. I will try out okular in a few weeks when I start teaching again.

Any more ideas on how to improve PDF document use in lectures?

PS: I am sure I do some of the things in: How To Do Everything Wrong In A Presentation

This is a short video from a wonderful talk given by Prof Hendrik Lenstra of Leiden University, bringing recursion to  vivid life. The talk's title was Escher and the Droste Effect, where Droste is apparently the name of a brand of cocoa powder where the image on the box has recursion. The videos in the talk were amazing. I couldn't understand all the maths--though it is explained in several papers and I ought to read up about it. However I was more interested at the time in gasping at the animations.

(download)

Click here to download:

VIDEO0008.3gp (5.98 MB)

Takes me back to reading "Godel, Escher Bach"...

I have moved my blog to here from Warwick Blogs. Mainly so that I could post video content directly from my mobile phone, and that seems to be working well. Playing with it.